The Florida Supreme Court has suspended a Tampa plaintiffs’ lawyer for the second time in three years after judges and the Florida Bar charged that he had wrongly accused courts and other lawyers of racial bias, then disrupted and prolonged court proceedings unnecessarily.
Kelsay Dayon Patterson, who is listed on legal websites as having specialized in personal injury law and in litigating health insurance denials, has been suspended from practice for two years, the court said in an opinion posted Thursday. Patterson was suspended in 2018 for one year for similar misconduct.
The court ruling overrode a referee’s recommendation of a 90-day suspension. It is the third time in the last three months that the high court has signaled its willingness to impose much stiffer sanctions than those suggested by court-appointed referees.
The justices said that Patterson had engaged in misconduct between 2011 and 2018. In a federal lawsuit, filed on behalf of the mother of a young man who died after fighting with police in a hospital emergency room lobby, Patterson antagonized the court and caused interruptions to the proceedings. The federal judge wrote a 42-page order detailing Patterson’s actions.
“This court has repeatedly admonished plaintiff’s counsel from failing to comply with court orders,” U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza wrote, as recounted by the state Supreme Court. Patterson also was guilty of “improperly deviating from the legal issues in this case; and baselessly suggesting that defendants, defense counsel, and the judges presiding over this case have been motivated by some racial or other bias.”
In one deposition, defense counsel asked Patterson to request his client to stop making faces and grunting noises. Instead, Patterson “asserted that ‘white American attorneys and white police officers always love to accuse Africans and blacks of always being hostile, of always being argumentative and always being nasty,'” the court wrote.
In another instance, a police officer inadvertently sent Patterson a faxed interrogatory report that was intended for the officer’s attorney. Instead of divulging that or turning it over to the opposing counsel, Patterson used the information improperly, the court said. The lawyer also failed to comply with numerous court orders.
The lawyer must now pay $8,548 in costs expended by the Florida Bar in the case.
Topics Florida
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